Elves

‘The QI Elves' are the people who research, write and produce QI in all its guises – television, radio, books, games, apps and internet thingies. Catch them on @qikipedia.

Piers Fletcher

Flash

aka Piers Fletcher

QI's TV Producer

Piers ‘Flashy’ Fletcher is slightly irritated by biographical notes which are expressed in the third person even though they're clearly written by the subject himself. Be that as it may, his career has involved three years at Oxford and a stint in the Army, where he was put in charge of the northernmost Observation Post in Hong Kong. Had the Chinese invaded, he would have been the very first opponent they encountered. (They didn't.) He then spent a gruelling 22 years as a commodity broker in the City of London, specialising in potato futures and compliance issues. As well as producing the TV show, he writes this and that for a living. Lord Flashheart, the Blackadder character played by Rik Mayall, is based on him.

Twitter @Piers_Fletcherqi.com/talk Flash

qi source of choiceArthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia

favourite qi factThe one about how it’s impossible to explain which is left and which is right without using a visual reference (because, says Flashy, that one always leads to an argument which I know I’m going to win).

John Mitchinson

Mitch

aka John Mitchinson

QI's Director of Research

John ‘Mitch’ Mitchinson is QI's Director of Research. His background is in books; he was the first marketing director of Waterstones and then turned to publishing, where his authors included the Beatles, Michael Palin, Haruki Murakami and a woman who knits with dog hair.

Mitch's refusal to do anything for very long has left him with several children, a lot of books, one chin too many and a brain his wife refers to as 'the skip'. But he makes good sourdough bread, plants crops by moonlight, and is one of the few people who knows how to cook a pig's spleen properly. He lives in rural splendour in Great Tew, Oxfordshire (the village where QI began) keeping pigs, sheep and chickens, and researching and writing the bestselling QI books.

favourite qi factFor every grain of sand on earth there are at least 100 stars in the sky.

Justin Pollard

Bo'sun

aka Justin Pollard

QI's History Elf

Justin ‘Bo’sun’ Pollard is an award-winning historian and the owner of the world’s smallest ponytail. He once worked as an archaeologist excavating Thomas Beckett's monastery, and provides historical consultancy for feature films such as Elizabeth, Atonement and Pirates of the Caribbean – as well as the TV series The Tudors, which gets him into lots of trouble with other historians. With John Mitchinson, he recently set up the world's first crowd-funded publishing company, Unbound. He also writes hugely popular history books, including Boffinology, Secret Britain and Charge! which are available at all good booksellers (please).

Rob Blake

Dr Bob

aka Rob Blake

QI's Astronomical Elf

Rob Blake is an astronomer-turned-IT professional-turned-back-into-an-astronomer again. After spending the past four years arguing with John Lloyd about how many moons the Earth has, he has spent the past several years looking after the website. He eventually convinced us that our lunar fact was incorrect; something that happens only once in a blue Cruithne.

qi.com/talk dr.bob

qi source of choiceBBC Radio 4's More or Less.

favourite qi factA photon of light generated at the centre of the Sun can take anything between 17,000 years and 1,000,000 years to escape its surface.

Jenny Doughty

Jenny

aka Jenny Doughty

QI's International Gnome

Jenny ‘Jenny’ Doughty has insufficient imagination to invent an interesting username. She forms part of QI's Transatlantic Wing, as she lives in the USA – albeit as close to Canada as possible. Her career has included teaching and working for Penguin Books, which was like letting a vampire loose in a blood bank. She has also published articles, poems and books under her current name and her previous one, Jenny Green. Jenny now moderates the QI talk forums, ruthlessly banning spammers, putting out potential legal fires and attempting to pour oil on troubled posters. Occasionally she throws useful nuggets of research into the remorselessly grinding QI Fact Mill.

Twitter @Britinmeqi.com/talk Jenny

favourite qi factSnails are blue-blooded.

quite interestingInsatiable curiosity, plus Google.

Mat Coward

Lefty

aka Mat Coward

QI's Phenomenal Elf

Mat ‘International man of Mystery’ Coward is the most reclusive of the QI Elves, whose contributions to the show are almost exclusively provided over the internet. Some have suggested that he is actually a front for producer Piers Fletcher to take two wages. One thing we do know is that he is a prolific author of crime novels, children's books and short stories, as well as writing for Fortean Times - the magazine of anomalous phenomena. He's also the gardening columnist for the world's only English-language, socialist, daily newspaper, The Morning Star. To find out more about Mat's work, check out his website.

Dr Will Bowen

Doc

aka Dr Will Bowen

QI's Theoretical Elf

Will ‘Wilbo’ Bowen is QI's Head of Unusual Experiments. He's also been a freelance stage designer and engineer for over 25 years, starting out as the designer of Rowan Atkinson’s one-man show. Other productions he's been involved in include Phantom of the Opera, The Wizard of Oz, Derren Brown's stage show Svengali and most recently the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Will has a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University, and once spent three days working out that the number of possible combinations for re-editing Not The Nine O’Clock News sketches onto video was greater than the number of particles in the known universe. He’s possibly the only adult human on the planet who doesn't need a mobile phone.

qi.com/talk WB

qi source of choiceThe wisdom of my forefathers.

favourite qi factThe Banach-Tarski Theorem, which states that you can cut a solid sphere the size of a pea into a finite number of pieces and re-assemble them into a solid sphere the size of the sun, leaving no holes.

Andrew Hunter Murray

Hunter

aka Andrew Hunter Murray

QI's Literary Elf

Andrew Hunter Murray has worked at QI since 2008, writing and researching on the TV series and books, and co-presenting the QI podcast No Such Thing As A Fish and its spin-off TV show No Such Thing As The News. As part of his employment he has dressed as George from the Famous Five, visited a taxidermy warehouse, and Googled more disturbing phrases than GCHQ could possibly keep up with. When not Quite Interestingly employed, he moonlights at Private Eye, writing for the magazine and hosting the in-house podcast, Page 94. He also performs as a solo character comedian, and with the award-winning Jane Austen-based comedy troupe ‘Austentatious’.

Twitter @andrewhuntermqi.com/talk Gentleman Jones

qi source of choiceCassell's Dictionary of Slang .

favourite qi factKangaroos have three vaginas.

Anna Ptaszynski

Anna

aka Anna Ptaszynski

QI's Sarcastic Elf

Anna's contributions to QI include researching for the TV show since the J series, featuring on the QI podcast No Such Thing As A Fish and spin-off TV show No Such Thing As The News, putting facts on the @qikipedia twitter feed while pretending to have nothing to do with social media, and feeding the office fish. Previous employment includes licking stamps for an MSP, dabbling in the Melbourne advertising industry and selling plum wine to anyone foolish enough to buy it.

qi source of choiceBritish Newspaper Archive

favourite qi factThe current Earl of Sandwich founded a chain of sandwich restaurants with a man called Robert Earl. The restaurants are called The Earl of Sandwich.

Steve Colgan

Stig

aka Steve Colgan

QI's Doodling Elf

Stevyn ‘Stig’ Colgan is an ex-chef, an ex-police officer and an ex-cellent writer of corking puns to use in biographies. In a somewhat eclectic half century, he has written briefing notes for two prime ministers, sculpted aliens for Bruce Willis to shoot at, made part of Dippy the Diplodocus’s new tail at the Natural History Museum, been kissed by Princess Diana, and set on fire twice by rioters. He’s also had three books published, has illustrated several others and was once commissioned to write scripts for Gerry Anderson and Doctor Who, none of which got made, goddammit. Originally from Cornwall, he intends to return there one day to become the old curmudgeon at the end of the street who won’t give kids their balls back.

Twitter @stevyncolgan

qi source of choiceBert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys and Girls by Dr Fegg.

favourite qi factThe centre of the galaxy smells of raspberries and tastes of rum. No, really. It’s to do with all the ethyl formate floating around.

Freddy Soames

Fromes

aka Freddy Soames

QI's Euro Elf

Freddy is a highly cosmopolitan elf whose specialisms include computer-wrangling, the French language, photography and a fine tenor voice. He's also fresh out of his university studies so can serve up English literature facts on tap to boot.

@fsoames

qi source of choiceThe Penguin Companion to Food

favourite qi factWagner always wore pink silk underwear.

James Harkin

Eggshaped

aka James Harkin

QI's Science Elf

QI researcher and writer since the C Series, James is QI’s Head Elf, and in the course of his Quite Interesting duties has sung karaoke with Bhutanese monks, danced with the world's most advanced humanoid robot and learned how to tear a telephone directory in half. He co-produces QI's Radio 4 show The Museum of Curiosity, co-authored the last five QI books and co-presents the QI podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, along with its spin-off TV show No Such Thing As The News.

Twitter @eggshapedqi.com/talk eggshaped

qi source of choiceBlogs such as neatorama.com and boingboing.net

favourite qi factBritain originally intended to test its atomic bombs in Yorkshire.

Anne Miller

Dusty

aka Anne Miller

QI's Tartan Elf

Anne came to QI from Edinburgh, turning up armed with a Politics & Sociology degree, a bucket load of curiosity and two Blue Peter badges. She has worked at the BBC, ITV and written for the Guardian but after spending a few days at the QI studios she was quickly welcomed into the Elves’ Mushroom. She researches and writes for QI and Museum of Curiosity, co-writes the QI books, regularly guests on the QI podcast and reached the semi-finals of Only Connect with her fellow Elves. In her spare time, she writes a weekly books column for Standard Issue magazine.

Twitter @miller_anneqi.com/talk Dusty

qi source of choiceThe wrappers on Penguin bars.

favourite qi factScotland has twice as many pandas as Conservative MPs.

Molly Oldfield

Moll

aka Molly Oldfield

QI's Original Elf

‘The Mollster’ is the longest serving of all the Elves and has been involved with QI since slightly before it started. She has settled down since the giddy early days, which involved reading through the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and riding a motorbike through Kazakhstan on the company's behalf. She now writes the weekly QI column for the Daily Telegraph and works as a researcher on QI's sister radio show, The Museum of Curiosity. Molly's new book, The Secret Museum, is out now - click here for more.

Twitter @MollyOldfieldqi.com/talk Molly Cule
www.mollyoldfield.com

qi source of choiceThe basements of museums.

favourite qi factThe last 'speakers' of the Amazonian Maypore language were parrots kept as pets by the tribe.

Dan Schreiber

Dan

aka Dan Schreiber

QI's Ideas Elf

Dan has done a lot of co-ing. He co-created and co-produced 7 series of BBC Radio 4’s Museum of Curiosity, co-produced Frank Skinner’s The Rest Is History panel show, and co-created the QI podcast No Such Thing As A Fish. Dan has fronted his own Channel 4 documentary on UFO conspiracies, appeared as a panellist on numerous TV and radio shows, and in 2014 completed a month-long sell-out Edinburgh Fringe run of his debut stand-up show C*ckblocked From Outer Space, which was named one of the top 100 most favourably reviewed shows of the Fringe. He ranked 100. He now presents No Such Thing As A Fish and its spin-off TV series, No Such Thing As The News.